We have eight books on our radar this week! Which ones will you be checking out?
Celestial Banquet by Roselle Lim
Sweet July Books
Once every generation, the Major Gods hold a Celestial Banquet, inviting chefs from all over the Continent to prepare mouthwatering fantastical feasts. The winner is awarded the fabled Peaches of Immortality, along with a lifetime of fame and fortune. The losers perish per the whims of the fickle gods.
Hot-headed noodle chef Cai enters the competition with dreams of owning her own restaurant and supporting her impoverished Peninsula town. Along with the drunken Minor God Kama, her childhood crush-turned-friend Bo, and dreamy noble Seon, Cai must now compete against the Continent’s finest culinary masters in trials that range from hunting and serving up mystical sea serpents to preparing a magical omurice from the eggs of the legendary Jian bird.
Battling impossible odds and inconvenient feelings for both Bo and Seon, Cai is determined to prepare a feast fit for the gods―even if she loses her life. Set in a spectacular world inspired by Chinese and Southeast Asian folklore, Celestial Banquet is an ode to food, home, and family, wrapped in an epic and thrilling adventure.
Dan in Green Gables: A Graphic Novel by Rey Terciero and Claudia Aguirre
Penguin Workshop
Despite a life on the road with his free-spirited mother, fifteen-year-old Dan Stewart-Álvarez has always wanted to settle down. He just didn’t think it’d be like this: with his mother abandoning him in rural Tennessee with two strangers—his gentle grandmother and conservative, rough-around-the-edges grandfather. Here, he is forced to adjust to working the farm, entering high school, and hardest yet—reckoning with his queerness in a severe Southern Baptist community.
But even as Dan grows closer to his mawmaw, befriends fellow outsiders at school, and tries to make a new life for himself in Green Gables, he has to discover whether he can contend with intolerance and adapt to change without losing himself in the process.
From award-winning author Rey Terciero and Eisner Award nominee and illustrator Claudia Aguirre comes a new retelling of Anne of Green Gables about unconventional families, queer identity, and finding the meaning of home in the most unlikely of places.
A Forgery of Fate by Elizabeth Lim
Knopf Books for Young Readers
Truyan Saigas didn’t choose to become a con artist, but after her father is lost at sea, it’s up to her to support her mother and two younger sisters. A gifted art forger, Tru has the unique ability to paint the future, but even such magic is not enough to put her family back together again, or stave off the gangsters demanding payment in blood for her mother’s gambling debts.
Left with few options, Tru agrees to a marriage contract with a mysterious dragon lord. He offers a fresh start for her mother and sisters and elusive answers about her father’s disappearance, but in exchange, she must join him in his desolate undersea palace. And she must assist him in a plot to infiltrate the tyrannical Dragon King’s inner circle, painting a future so treasonous, it could upend both the mortal and immortal realms. . . .
The Haunted Blizzard by Aviaq Johnston
Inhabit Media
A teenage girl walks home in a burgeoning blizzard, happy to have an unexpected snow day. Ignoring an Elder’s warning about the terror the blizzard holds, she finds herself alone in her home with an unseen presence stalking and tormenting her. What does it want? And will she survive?
I’ll Pretend You’re Mine by Tashie Bhuiyan
HarperCollins
Summer Ali has been making a name for herself in the music industry for years, slowly but surely climbing the charts—but the world doesn’t know her stage parents are the ones who molded her entire public persona. Finally eighteen, Summer breaks free of their control and focuses on creating her own path.
Upon running into writer’s block, Summer grows eager to take any opportunity to shake things up—even if it means agreeing to a PR stunt with child-actor-turned-playboy, Jules Moradi, famous for his tabloid escapades.
At first, Jules keeps his distance, maintaining professional boundaries. But as time passes, his walls come down, and Summer uncovers who he is beyond his reputation, and it’s someone more like her than she ever realized. As the lines blur between fake and real, Summer begins questioning who she is and what she wants—and if her dreams are worth sacrificing her heart.
Never Thought I’d End Up Here by Ann Liang
Scholastic
Leah Zhang has just ruined her cousin’s wedding. She didn’t mean to wish the bride a depressing marriage and poor health, but she’s forgotten most of her Mandarin. Her parents stage an intervention: Leah will be sent on a travel program across China’s most beautiful cities. To them, it’s the perfect opportunity for Leah to get back to her roots. To Leah, it’s simply a much-needed escape.
But before Leah can even begin to enjoy the luxurious hotels, stunning scenery, and mouth-watering cuisine, she finds that also on the trip is cynical, sarcastic Cyrus Sui, who’s somehow only gotten more annoyingly handsome since the day he told a lie that ruined her life.
While Leah might be tempted to shove him off the peak of the Yellow Mountain when nobody’s looking, she can’t get rid of him just yet. After all, she might never get another chance to get revenge.
Yet the deeper they wander into China’s provinces, the deeper Leah finds herself falling in love ― with the boy she once thought she despised, the home she never thought she’d call her own, and the parts of herself she thought were already lost.
Under the Neon Lights by Arriel Vinson
G.P. Putnam’s Sons Books for Young Readers
Sixteen-year-old Jaelyn Coleman lives for Saturdays at WestSide Roll, the iconic neighborhood roller rink. On these magical nights, Jae can lose herself in the music of DJ Sunny, the smell of nachos from the concession, and the crowd of some of her favorite people—old heads, dance crews, and other regulars like herself. Here, Jae and other Black teens can fully be themselves.
One Saturday, as Jae skates away her worries, she crashes into the cutest boy she’s ever seen. Trey’s dimples, rich brown skin, and warm smile make it impossible for her to be mad at him though. Best of all, he can’t stop finding excuses to be around her. A nice change for once, in contrast with her best friend’s cold distance of late or her estranged father creeping back into her life.
Just as Jae thinks her summer might change for the better, devastating news hits: Westside Roll is shutting down. The gentrification rapidly taking over her predominantly Black Indianapolis neighborhood, filling it with luxury apartments and fancy boutiques, has come for her safe-haven. And this is just one trouble Jae can’t skate away from.
Debut author Arriel Vinson’s lyrical and contemplative story of young Black love and coming of age in Indianapolis ushers in an exciting new voice in YA literature.
Your Final Moments by Jay Coles
Scholastic
Hakeem goes to Narcotics Anonymous meetings to keep his addictions in check. But when his best friend Miles kills himself, Hakeem finds the days harder and harder to get through. He loved Miles — maybe even loved loved him — and he’s haunted by the fact that there might have been something he could have done to ease his friend’s pain. He meets a girl named Eliza in his NA meetings, and she is there for him when something truly out-there happens… Hakeem calls Miles’s old phone number. And Miles not only calls back from beyond the grave, but has news to share: He didn’t kill himself. He was murdered.
Finding out the truth about Miles might end up helping Hakeem find his way to his own truth… and further strength to stay alive himself. But as his relationship with Eliza grows, other cracks begin to show… and holding his world together may be even harder than he thought it would be.